Student Loans Take a Toll

Ronald Quang

Prof. Williams

English 1A

22 December 2013

Student Loans Take a Toll

            Colleges can take a toll on someone’s life depending on how much it cost to go to that college and how much loan people needed to borrow from companies. The type of occupation with their degree from the college is the turning point that can decide whether they will be successful or in debt most of their life. For most families, parents would always tell their children to go work hard in school and go to college to get a good degree and a great paying job, but what does not come to mind is how much colleges cost, how their children will deal with loans, and the amount of jobs by the time their children are out of college. This will bring trouble to people’s lives, families, and future. Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, the authors of “The Rich and the Rest of Us”, along with a video called “College Conspiracy” on Youtube has prime examples of what happens/ can happen to people with college loans and how it affects their future life. Student loans can damage a person’s life if he/she cannot find a job to pay back what they owed and can ultimately keep a family in poverty because of debt to loan companies.

            Paying back college loans should be the number one thing to do on a person’s list as soon as they get a job after college. The longer people wait, the more and more money they will have to pay due to interest rates. Students work hard throughout high school in order to go to the college they desire in the future. They soon realize that they will need college loans in order to attend the college and stay in the college. After all the schooling of 4-8 years, students have racked up a large amount of number for them to pay back after they graduate. The next step that students take may be even harder: finding a job. The amount of jobs we have right now in America is way too low because of the economy. According to Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, “corporate profits soared, middle class jobs vanished, high- wage industries accounted for only 14 percent of new jobs, while low wage work made up almost 50 percent of job growth” (Smiley, West 65). These numbers were from 2012 and there has not been too much a change in a year. While thousands of college students graduate every year and they go and find jobs. It is impossible to pay back the college loans they have borrowed if almost 50% of new jobs out in the world are low wage jobs. Not every single graduate will find a job, so in time, their student loans will rise and it would be very hard to pay back what they owed before they retire. A lady that was interviewed in the video “College Conspiracy” owed about 136,000 when she got out of dental school. Throughout time, she paid off about 100,000, but the student loan companies says that she owes about 300,000 still. She wasn’t making enough money to meet the deadlines that the student loan company provided for her, so interest rates and other federal laws took place and her the amount that she owed has raised to a much higher number. Even though paying back loans is very important, sometimes there is nothing people can do about it. There aren’t enough jobs in America with a high- wage to pay people the amount they need in order to pay back loans. This can keep people in the poverty class down from rising to middle class or better.

            Jobs are a very important thing to have in our country, but the government is spending the money in wrong places and not creating new jobs. Because of the war back in 2003 to now, the government has spent trillion of dollars to our military and giving them what is necessary to invade another country. Within these trillion of dollars, billions of them have been spent carelessly on unnecessary item. This money that was spent could have been used to help many college students to be in college or to help them when they are out of college, which is creating more jobs. In a way, interest would be lowered in loans and there would be less trouble for the economy and companies. Smiley and West states that “if students had access to interest-free loans like big banks do, many young people would flourish with less debt” (Smiley, West 108). There is a pattern in how people respond to interest being lowered in loans. From the government spending more money in education to what Smiley and West said in their book, shows that interest rates can really damage someone in their future. But the thought of interest free loans would help so many people become successful in America and other places around the world. America would immediately see the economy go up and more jobs would be created because of the money that the government and the rich have.

            There are ways that schools and government can fix these problems by lowering tuition if there were not so many rules and careless spending. Schools are always trying to impress future college students with all the new technology and new buildings they have at their campus, but in order to do that, millions of dollars have to go into building and investing in their new state of the art programs. Then tuition's will be raised because the college will need to have more money to maintain everything they have on campus. This would affect almost all of the students that attend their school because some students will need to take out more student loans to pay for their college fees. What needs to be done is to only have what is necessary for the students. The new buildings that don’t have anything to do with most of the students can hurt them financially. Another problem is financial aid. In “College Conspiracy”, a man that is in control of the tuition is forced to raise the tuition when financial aid is being raised. Even though he doesn’t like raising the tuition, the college forces him to. There is no point in raising financial aid if college tuition is going to be raised as well. This won’t help any of the students who are attending the college or if they’re going to attend the college in the future. These are some of the problems that can be fixed in colleges in order to give graduating students a better future. It lowers the amount they owe to student loan companies and it will give them a chance at rising to the middle class and the 1%.

            In conclusion, colleges hurt students by constantly raising their tuition each year by a lot or a little. This forces students to take loans from companies and return it when they get a job in the future, but the economy is not good enough to create more jobs for the students with degrees. The interest rates then kick in to their loan money and numbers go higher and higher even though they are slowly paying back with the money they are making. These problems could be fixed but the government and schools choose not to and only choose to think about themselves. This keeps people from rising and it keeps families in debt for a very long time.